SINCE SHE began uploading music from her bedroom at the age of 16, singer-songwriter Dodie - aka Essex native Dorothy Clark - has gone on to enjoy some level of success.
Now 23, Dodie has amassed 350 million streams across YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music; released two EPs - Intertwined and You - which both reached the Top 40 of the UK official album charts (no mean feat when we all think we should get our music for free ); and, more locally, her March 18 show in Vicar Street is already sold out.
Now comes her third EP, Human, a quiet, understated, work, of acoustic led indie-pop, which is all the stronger for showing such gentleness and restraint across the 24 minutes of its seven songs. The minimalism is made apparent from opener 'Arms Unfolding', featuring Dodie's double tracked vocals, backed only by a drone which also appears to be constructed from her voice.
'Monster' possesses a quirky pop melody, but is elevated from the merely catchy to something special with the growing intensity of the rhythm and the onset of the choral like chant: "We won't eat our words/They don't taste so good".
The highlight is perhaps 'She', a song of unrequited love to a girl who "tastes like apple juice and peach", with Dodie delivering a deliberately shy, low-key, bashful vocal, over subtle acoustic guitar, accompanied by a finely judged string arrangement which knowns the exact moment to rise, fall, be quiet, and return. At the end comes a twist, in which Dodie alludes to her own bisexuality and hints at the phenomenon of bi-erasure.
